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14 September 2015

Across the Great Divide

As a kid, I vaguely remember watching a movie called Across the Great Divide. I don’t remember a ton of details – essentially two orphan kids have to get across the Rocky Mountains and to the West Coast to get their inheritance. In the process, they meet up with… and end up partnering with… a con man which ends up being key to reaching their goal.

The title of the movie has an obvious meaning. Those orphans had to cross the Continental, or Great, Divide – a hydrological boundary that runs from the Bering Strait in Alaska to the Strait of Magellan, at the tip of South America. This line divides two great watersheds. To the east of the divide, all water drains, ultimately, into the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, it courses to the Pacific.

There is, however, another more symbolic meaning to those words. The Great Divide was not just that place where geologically, water flow separated. It was also the converse – it was the place where, for a moment, those ultimately heading in very different directions actually met. Thus, metaphorically, what could be seen by some only as only a source of division could, conceivably, also become a summit meeting place, a place for conversation and dialogue, a place for challenge, growth and change...